No conspiracy seen in armored car hijack bid

Larry D. Hatfield, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Friday, March 31, 1995

1995-03-31 04:00:00 PDT SONOMA -- Although they have criminal records and intriguing, if tenuous, links to Charles Manson and the old Symbionese Liberation Army, the suspects in Tuesday's bloody armored car hijack attempt in Sonoma were not linked to any broad conspiracy, authorities believe.

Nor do investigators believe there is a link between the Sonoma robbery attempt, in which a Loomis guard and one of the suspects were shot to death, and 11 other armored car stickups in the Bay Area in the past year.

Police have not yet officially identified the dead robber, but law enforcement sources said Thursday that he was William Crouch, 63, a career criminal with a 40-year history of robberies and other crimes in the Bay Area and elsewhere. He was paroled from the federal prison at Terminal Island last August.

The other suspect, Joan Carrafa, 35, was arraigned in Santa Rosa Thursday afternoon on attempted robbery and murder charges.

"Naturally, we're looking into the background of the suspects and the interconnection between them both and others," an FBI source said, "but that's a routine part of investigations."

Plot to spring Manson&lt;

Both Carrafa and Crouch were linked by authorities to a purported plot several years ago to spring SLA members and mass killer Charles Manson from prison. Authorities said they and remnants of the SLA terrorist group planned to finance the escapes from money raised by a string of bank and other holdups.

But several law enforcement sources said Thursday that while their backgrounds were interesting, they did not appear to have much to do with Tuesday's events.

"You could conjecture any way you want and link them to international terrorists, the Mafia, survivalists, supremacists, drug gangs or almost anything else that appeals to you," said one source close to the investigation. "But most often, it's just criminals pursuing their careers, and that would appear to be the case here."

Said another, also declining to be identified or speak on the record: "These folks hang out with folks of the same tastes."

The connection between Joan Carrafa and Crouch is Carrafa's husband Victor, 52, a San Francisco murderer and career criminal recently sentenced to life in prison for shooting a Sacramento County deputy in the face during an escape attempt in 1993.

Although there was no immediate indication others were involved in Tuesday's robbery attempt, authorities were looking at known associates of the Carrafas and Crouch.

"That's particularly true of Victor, who's sort of among the royalty of the underworld," said one police source who has known him for years.

"Violent, crazy bikers'&lt;

"I know a lot of people he (Carrafa) associates with and they're all violent, crazy bikers. Victor's group of people are highly organized and intelligent. His notebooks and address books are like a "Who's Who' of the parole world."

Victor Carrafa was sentenced to life in prison for the 1966 fatal shooting of a cocktail lounge manager during a San Francisco holdup, but he was released after only 12 years when California sentencing laws changed.

While in prison, he showed the first evidence of his penchant for escape, joining three other San Quentin inmates in 1970 in sliding down a rope braided from denims and swimming 300 yards into San Francisco Bay before being spotted by a guard and recaptured.

Joan Carrafa, who was 15 when she ran away from her Iowa home, met him by corresponding with him in prison. They married when he got out. The couple has three sons: Aryan, 15, Brandon, 14, and Mason, 4.

In 1978, Victor Carrafa escaped in his underwear from the old Contra Costa County jail in Martinez, where he was held on a burglary charge; Joan Carrafa was arrested and pleaded guilty to mailing a hacksaw to him in a birthday card.

A year later, now on parole, Victor Carrafa was imprisoned again for parole violation after a raid on his house yielded weapons stolen from a Concord gun exchange.

In that incident, which had striking similarities to the Sonoma robbery attempt, he allegedly took $199,000 bound for a Stockton bank. He was acquitted.

Record goes back 40 years&lt;

The raided Concord house in which the Carrafas were living was owned by Crouch. When police raided Crouch's house in Pleasant Hill, they found more guns, including a .38-caliber pistol taken from a Loomis guard in a robbery.

Crouch has a record stretching to 1955 when he was jailed for a Mississippi bank robbery. He escaped from a prison farm in 1960 after a failed attempt in 1957. He then was convicted of a Kern County robbery in 1962. When he was released, he moved to Concord and met the Carrafas.

In 1969, he had a shootout with sheriff's deputies during a robbery attempt in Seattle; he was shot 11 times and spent nine years in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas before being paroled in 1978 and returning to Concord. He was once arrested, but not convicted, as a suspect in two Santa Rosa bank robberies.

Crouch was convicted of a Sunnyvale bank robbery in 1983 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was paroled in 1986, only to be sent back for another offense.&lt;